


Counting Seconds

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Relationships, Character Death, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 22:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18039854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: After the Monster possesses Eliot, Quentin decides that the only way to save him is to go back to the moment everything went wrong and try to stop it.  He only gets one chance, all he needs is three minutes.





	Counting Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my head for a while, but it's been really loud this week, so here you go! I can't say much more than it's a fix-it that ends happy!

Quentin thinks that it will only take two or three minutes. All he has to do is stall her for three minutes. It's a tall order. Delaying Margo when she's on a mission can be next to impossible. He's pretty sure that just the sight of him will be enough to eat up the first thirty to sixty seconds. He swallows and walks around the side of the Cottage as she storms towards the front door. 

“Margo!” She stops dead, then swings to face him, and her face is frozen in shocked disbelief. 

“Q.” The syllable wavers; her fine Fillorian clothes are covered in dirt. Her manicure is probably ruined. “Oh my god!” Quentin doesn't move to cut the distance between them. Making her come to him will eat up more time. “How are you here?” Quentin counts seconds silently in his head. 

“It's a long fucking story.” She blinks, and two tears track through the patina of dust smudging her face. Finally, she moves, but Quentin doesn't dare breathe a sigh of relief until she's in his arms and he's holding her still. He turns with her, deliberately putting himself between her and the door. A minute down, maybe a minute and a half. He needs to double that. 

“How...” 

“Shh.” She tucks into him, her head ducks, and she hides her face against his chest. Quentin kisses her hair. He knows better than anyone else what she's been through, what she's about to go through. She's going to hate him when she puts all the pieces together. Quentin hates himself a little too, but this is better than the alternative. He just has to stall her for another minute or so because Eliot won't go through the clock if she's standing there in front of him. Neither of them will go, and Quentin knows what comes after that because he's had to live through all of it. Their memories will come back, and Eliot will lie to him about loving him. 

Margo will never forgive him, but at least this way Eliot dies after living a beautiful life in Fillory and that thing locked away in Blackspire will never get its hands on him. 

“Your letter, I thought you were dead. Q? What's going on?” Quentin knows her next question before she asks it. “Where's Eliot?” He can't stop his eyes from tearing up. The silent count of seconds continues to tick by in his mind. 

“I'm sorry, Margo.” Quentin isn't sure what effect this will have on the timeline, but after the Monster escaped and possessed Eliot, this solution felt like the only viable option. He isn't sure if his actions will spin off a new timeline and he will be Quentin forty trapped in timeline forty-one or if he'll fade because he managed to change timeline forty significantly enough that he's already dead. Time travel is so fucking confusing. Hopefully, he hasn't created an infinite causality loop. 

“What the fuck did you do?” Margo wrenched herself free from his hold. “Where's El?” Her voice has gone high pitched and frantic. Quentin grabs her shoulders and forces his gaze to meet hers. He's fairly confident he's stalled long enough. 

“El's gone. We both are.” The tears spill down his face now. “Jane she, when she sent you back to Earth to get the key from her corpse she sent you back with just enough time to stop us before we walked through the clock. It all goes south from there, Margo. Things only get worse, and El ends up paying the price. 

“Pays the price for what?” Quentin sniffs and drops his gaze as he squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Trying to save my life after I did something foolish.” He blinks away the tears and forces his eyes back to her. “I love him so much, Margo. We raised a son together in Fillory, we had a family, and I know El was happy. He and I had this wonderful life together; he died peacefully in his sleep. Margo's eyes fix on his wrist, and Quentin looks down to see that his skin has gone transparent. The relief hits him like a truck. He would have lived out the end of his life again if that was what fate warranted, but he's so relieved he doesn't have to. “We love you, Margo. Eliot missed you so much! Having you with us would have been the only thing that would have made our lives better.” 

“Q...” 

“I'm sorry you didn't get to say goodbye to him.” Quentin knows he's running out of seconds, and his mind is suddenly crowded with things to tell her, so he starts a rambling list of them. “The fairies have a key. You need to work with them to get it. You're going to be an amazing king, Margo! You're going to help Josh, own the rest of the key quest and get magic back. Just, for the love of fuck, when you get to Castle Blackspire don't try to kill the damn thing! It possesses its hosts; that's what it did to El.” His hands are almost gone. “The library has a siphon for the Wellspring, and they'll be waiting to ambush you.” Her eyes have gone hard, even as tears streak down her face, she's internalizing his words and Quentin has never been prouder of her. “Don't take Alice to the Castle, don't let the key you find in the abyss touch your skin, don't trust Fogg, or fucking Tick! Rafe and Abigail are okay. Fen makes a good acting high king.” Quentin takes a breath. “I love you. Eliot loved you.” 

He feels himself pulling away from her. The smell of peach trees in full bloom is suddenly overwhelming, and Quentin sinks against the trunk of one. His body aches, he feels old, and a short rest won't hurt. He can hear Theo's littlest girl giggling somewhere farther down the row of trees. His son's wife has always reminded him of Eliot, with her head of dark, full hair and razor wit. The three-year-old has inherited her mom's mop of thick dark curls, and somehow even though there isn't a genetic connection, Eliot's eyes. Magic is weird. Quentin has never said it, but she's his favorite. With a sigh he closes his eyes and let out a breath, his body relaxes, then he is somewhere else. 

The panels of elevator doors slide open, which is odd because there aren't elevators in Fillory. People bustle around the hotel lobby, and Quentin's memory of the Underworld rises like a triggered sense memory from where it has been buried in his subconscious. It hasn't changed. There's almost a spring in his step as he darts into the lobby, and it takes a moment to realize that he's younger again, not young like 20, but young like he'd been when he'd had both Eliot and Ari and Theo was still a toddler. Gods, are they here? He gets in line and shuffles slowly towards the counter. 

“Quentin Coldwater.” He tells the desk attendant. “Um, there's a time loop issue, so I've probably checked in before.” 

“That's right.” The woman smiles warmly, clearly appreciating both his calm and preparedness. “Thirty-nine times before in fact.” 

“Yeah, I need to know if someone has moved on, or if he waited for me.” He didn't expect Arielle to have waited more than 50 years for him, but El... He'd have waited a hundred years for Eliot. 

“What's his name?” 

“Eliot Waugh, or Coldwater maybe, 40th version? I don't know how many times he's died though. The clerk hums then nods and scribbles down some instructions to help him find his way. Quentin swallows down the lump in his throat as he steps into the elevator she points toward. He makes sure to follow the directions exactly, down the hall, take the third left, then the second right, the eighth door on the left. 

The handle is cool under his fingers, and the door opens into a grassy field and a starlit sky at twilight. The last of the sun is dying the edge of the horizon a hundred colors. A breeze rustles through the grape vines surrounding him. When he turns around the door is gone. There's a winery further up the hill, and he heads for the closest set of stairs that lead to the sprawling patio. Eliot's leaning on the railing, and there are two glasses of an expensive red sitting near his elbow, the remainder of the bottle was close at hand. 

“It took you long enough.” He's about the same age he was to match Quentin's. There's a hint of salt and pepper to his curls. 

“I had to make sure Margo would get the key; then I spent a few more years with our grandkids,” Quentin whispers. Eliot grins at him. His hand curls around the back of Quentin's neck, then Eliot leans to kiss him; Quentin finds himself flush against the taller man in the process. They fit together. They've always fit together. Quentin feels like he's come finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Just for clarity, after Q disappears he slides into his memory as old man Quentin, and loses all memory of the second half of the quest. I hope that was clear, that once he reaches the Underworld he doesn't remember ever stopping Margo. As far as he knows he and Eliot lived out their lives and died in Fillory.


End file.
